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relationships. A relatively short string compared to most of her friends. Her current love life was as dull and boring and alarmingly predictable as the rest of her life.
    Which suited Willie just fine. Daydreams were fun, but she wasn’t a boy-crazy teenager anymore. At least, Willie didn’t think she was until the florist van from Petunia’s Posies crunched up the driveway ahead of Jim Eggleson’s blue pickup. Then, God help her, she almost squealed as she hurried to the door to meet Petunia’s husband, Bob, bearing a white vase full of long-stemmed yellow roses.
    “You wouldn’t believe what Pet offered me,” he said, “but I wouldn’t let her read the card. You owe me, Willie.”
    “Lemme guess, Bob. Key lime pie?”
    “That oughta square us.”
    While Bob wolfed pie in the kitchen, and Jim and the boys unloaded a compressor from the pickup, Willie carried the flowers into her office. She put them on her desk, sat down and opened the card.
     “Thank you for a lovely dinner. Please reconsider my invitation. Your brother really isn’t my type.” It was signed Raven, with a P.S. that read “Promise I won’t offer you money or even mention the h-o-u-s-e,” followed by his phone number.
    If only he hadn’t mentioned Beaches, Willie might have fallen for it. Instead, his note convinced her that he was no more interested in her than the man in the moon. The flowers were a nice touch, though; she was sure Bob had told him yellow roses were her favorite.
    Her father would probably tell Raven to shove his roses, which meant she should pick up the phone and say yes. But there was something not quite right about Raven, something missing. She didn’t know what, but she trusted her intuition to tell her eventually. She put the card in a drawer, picked up her purse and mail and turned on the answering machine.
    She saw Bob out, hollered down the basement stairs to Jim and the boys that she’d be back for lunch and headed for Stonebridge. She might as well have stayed at Beaches handing screwdrivers to Jim and the boys. She learned only two new things about Raven: his address and the fact that every single woman in town was trying to trip him and beat him to the ground.
    Even Hester Pavao at the post office knew no more about him than Willie did—only that he’d moved to town two months ago, and when he’d found out about his uncle’s will he’d thrown a fit in the county clerk’s office that Whit Senior would have envied.
    “Don’t talk much when he comes in,” Hester told her. “Minds his business and nobody else’s.”
    The checkout girls at Pac ‘N Save pumped for details Willie while they rang up her groceries. Everyone in Stonebridge, it seemed, knew she’d had Raven over for dinner last night.
    Clouds began to gather and darken on her drive back to Beaches. So did Willie’s mood. Just her luck the weather would break after she sprang for central air conditioning.
    She didn’t see the cat, a black, tan and gray calico, until she almost hit it -- as it came pouncing out of the salt grass edging the road in pursuit of a field mouse. Willie slammed on the brakes, hard enough to make them screech. The cat froze, cringing in terror.
    So did Willie, her heart pounding in her throat. She was afraid to get out and look. But she had to, and she did, holding her breath and one hand over her mouth as she dropped to her heels and peered under the Jeep.
    The cat blinked up at her beneath the bumper, its gold eyes huge, its tail bristling. Willie sobbed with relief and sagged against the hot fender. The cat meowed and rubbed her shins. It was hardly more than a kitten, its fur dirty and gritty with sand and matted with burrs. It purred and arched its back when Willie reached out to it. She felt every vertebra in its spine, and her throat swelled with memory.
    Granma had always kept cats at Beaches. She’d had four when she died last August, but they’d all run away within days of her death. Just slipped away